The bitter aftermath of failed rape prosecutions for women

While your excellent leader (14 February) acknowledges the authorities' "widespread complicity in sexual abuse", three letters (17 February) call for a time limit on rape prosecutions and the prosecution of women accused of making a false allegation. There is already a zealous drive to prosecute women for lying. This is despite whistleblower PC James Patrick exposing widespread police pressure on women to retract rape reports, targeting the most vulnerable victims, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission finding that this had been a "standard operating procedure" in one London borough. Once women have been pressed to retract, what is to stop the police from accusing them of lying and the Crown Prosecution Service from prosecuting?

Is there a greater victim than the one who, having suffered violence, is jailed while her attacker goes free? We are working to overturn two miscarriages of justice – the convictions of Layla Ibrahim and Gail Sherwood, jailed after reporting rape by strangers. We brought these and other cases to the attention of Keir Starmer when he was director of public prosecutions. And while he is building a career as the victims' champion, the CPS under him prosecuted more vulnerable women and girls for "false allegations" than previously. The criminal justice agencies should indeed be ashamed of having treated pre-Savile victims with contempt. Too many rapes, recent and historic, were blocked by the authorities. Look at Oxford, Rochdale, Caldicott preparatory school … which reached convictions – eventually.

A not-guilty verdict doesn't prove that the victim lied. Yet after each celebrity acquittal, there are immediate calls for time limits on prosecutions and anonymity for the accused. Both display a unique eagerness to protect the accused and to disbelieve the victim. Both would silence victims – back to pre-Savile days.Lisa LongstaffWomen Against Rape

• Neil Jopson (Letters, 17 February) is quite wrong to lament the difference between limitation periods for civil claims and their absence in criminal cases. Abusers of the young and vulnerable are often manipulative and threatening, with the consequence that a child may be traumatised for years by guilt, shame and fear. It is not until well into adulthood that he or she finds the courage to speak out, knowing that this is likely to mean a torrid time, leading up to and in court, when the abuse has to be lived through again. To impose a time limit on criminal proceedings would be to achieve the precise result that manipulative and threatening behaviour aims at. Reform of the trial process along the lines of the 1989 Pigot report, so that all the evidence of the complainant would be recorded before trial, would encourage victims to speak out and reduce the lottery effect of the court process, peculiarly chronic in this kind of case.Paul CollinsLondon

• I think Neil Jopson should think about "cold cases" in the UK where murderers have been convicted decades after the crime on DNA evidence. In the US, convicted murderers have been proved innocent on such evidence after a decade or two on death row (thanks to the slowness of the appeals system). Not all evidence depends on fallible memories, and rape, too, may well leave such evidence.David BarnardCholesbury, Buckinghamshire